So The Story Goes
by Pantz
Summary: You were married, so the story goes, in a snazzy church outside of London.


_Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling _

**So The Story Goes **

You were married, so the story goes, in a snazzy church outside of London. It was an informal affair, beautiful in its ethereal simplicity, and an escape into carefree euphoria. The bride's hair was pinned with pansies. Your hair stuck up in all directions. The best man got drunk. Her sister sat sneering in a corner. You danced that night, a waltz for your mother, to the Beatles for your Bride, and the story goes that nothing could hide the stars glittering in your eyes.

You had, so the story goes, a love to be envied. First sight, burning passion, and never-ending scenes of romantic fluff to fill the spaces of time in between. You are remembered for that magnetic charm no person could ignore. She was known to be as coy as a fox. And the story goes that after your first kiss you loved each other forevermore.

_Once upon a time,_ is how you know the storytellers will begin. _In times so different from our own, two people loved on the brink of a war. It was a war_, they will say_, one of our bloodiest, but the couple lived together in wondrous bliss. _

_"The sky could have fallen,"_ the narrator may say, _"and they would never even notice its destruction." _

During this war, you had a child. He was a precocious boy with dazzling green eyes. He had the look of your ancestors, the smile of his mother, but his laugh was entirely yours. And the story goes that you lived, you three, in a world entirely of your own. A perfect end to a perfect story.

_"A happily ever after,"_ the narrator will end.

You can feel this story,_ your story_, inside of you. You close your eyes, see the images maybe within a dream, and then open your eyes and know you never had much confidence in stories.

You were married, as the story goes, in a snazzy church outside of London. She wore her sister's old wedding dress. You wore hand-me-down robes with a rose in the pocket and when you danced it was to the cries of war.

There was a waltz, you do remember that. Slow and perfect, with time standing still as you glided across the dance floor trying so hard, so very hard, to forget the reality outside of those four walls. Her hand was held tightly by yours, your arms were wound purposely around her waist, and it would be within that moment, if it existed at all, that you experienced your forevermore.

_"She was a Goddess,"_ you can be known to say about that day, but she was little more than a child.

And your love for her, well, it very nearly broke your heart. It left battle scars on your soul from the desperation you felt for her. There was passion, fierce and angry without the beauty, the simplicity love is supposed to have. _"Never love someone too deeply,"_ you would have told your son as you looked into the green eyes so like his mother's. _"Never allow another the power over your soul."_

She hated you once, long ago, so long ago that most probably don't even remember it, years and years, in fact. But it was there, as black as night, for all the world to see. She _hated_ you with a passion that, to this day, you never did understand. You were so desperate for her, convinced that you _needed _her, so much that sometimes it still pained you to look at her even when her anger had faded away. Sometimes her touch could be like a blade stabbing through your heart, even long after the battle, when she was securely and hopelessly yours. It still hurt you.

_"Do you love me,"_ you asked, just to hear, to know, because for so long it felt too miraculous to be true. Lightly, she'd push you, fall into your arms as a sigh of contentment passed through her lips, and she whisperd, _"of course."_ And, even years after your marriage, your heart still clenched with anticipation of her answer.

What if she said no?

But, as the story goes, she always answers with a light-hearted _"of course_" that had none of the need of your passionate question.

And once upon a time, there was a war. As bloody and devastating as the story goes. Only, there was no escaping it. The war is, after all, the reason why your story is told.

You could have been anybody you wanted, so different from the character you had become. You could have grown up, grown old, and passed through this life with little fame. You could have lived in that solitary moment with her and the only thing that would have carried on your memory would have been old, worn photographs stored in your great-grandchild's attic that they never look at. Your moment would pass, fade away quickly, and the world would go on, as it usually does.

But, the world grew dark, so slowly that for years you lived in the quiet. A light breeze fell over you when you were fourteen, a slight chill all of you were able to ignore, and by the time the clouds rolled in you were seventeen and ready, so ready, to see the sun again.

The war made you a hero, like years later it would make your son. You stared death defiantly in the eyes, knowing your death would give your family those few precious seconds most dearly needed, and you could never regret giving your life even if you wanted to. If time rolled back and your story began all over again, the ending, no matter how tragic and painful and destructive, would be the same.

She would be in your arms. You would share a last kiss, a soft kiss so ethereal you won't ever know if your lips actually touched. You would play one last game with your son, hear his small chuckles knowing that nothing in this world can be more beautiful than his smile. There would be a moment of stillness, a single moment of perfection that will blind you. Your life would still end, your wife would beg for her son's life with her dying breath, and your son would still have to live with the ghosts of those lost to the war.

Life would still settle in a cloud of pain. There would be rejoicing, yes, so much rejoicing that it would feel as if it would never end. Days of feasting and parties and moments when your world would forget that it would have to be hidden from that other world. And then the glow would settle, the dazzle fade, and the mourning would begin. Graveyards would fill, the dead would be buried in suffocating silence and no tears, not a single tear would be shed because the world would still be too numb and its heart too hard.

The faces would be dull, lifeless masks of what once was. It would be a cold world, not yet ready to move forward, and its memories still to raw to even glance back. Yet, one day, maybe a month later, maybe more, one person would look over at her friends or siblings or parents, lose herself in a moment so utterly mundane and ordinary that for a second it would feel like before the war, and she will laugh. It will be fleeting, so quick and insubstantial others will wonder if it ever truly happened. Other will look around wondering if someone had truly forgotten. And if so, if it were true, how? How did she forget?

And the girl who laughed would recede into the shadows, more pitiful than moments before from the guilt of forgetting, the pain that moment of freedom had caused, and one brazen person will step forward and emit a single chuckle. His eyes will sparkle, his smirk will be defiant, and he will look to the girl covered in shadow and then laugh again. And then another. And then another. And then another.

He won't stop until he sees her smile.

And within that laughter, you will be forgotten. Remembered always, yes, for your bravery and sacrifice. Honored and loved for generations to come. You will become fictionalized until the very essence of your story is lost. You will be celebrated, but you will cease to be mourned.

And this is the only way your story will ever be able to end.

--------

_"Hey Lil?" he looks over at the frowning girl beside him. "Lil?" _

_"James, please, not now." Her forehead is scrunched, her lips are pursed, and he smiles a secret smile before coming to sit next to her. _

_"You've been at that all day. Relax, Lily. It won't kill you." He's smiling that other smile now. The Marauder's smile she says to him every time she sees it with an amused glint in her eye and a tinge of laughter in her voice. _

_"I can't get it right. I just… nothing I can think of seems monumental enough. It's all so…" she pauses and throws her quill on the table. "Oh, James, it's so lame." _

_He turns her head toward him, maybe to look into her eyes, maybe to try and wipe the frustration away because she is so pretty, beautiful, when she smiles. _

_"It doesn't have to be anything phenomenal. Your speech isn't going to change the world." _

_"Oh James, and all these months I thought you were the visionary." _

_"Well," he says pushing a piece of her hair behind her ear. A slow intimate caress she would have closed her eyes for if it weren't for the intensity of his gaze. "My expertise is in a very different area. Sirius is the one for charming words, maybe you should just read off something he wrote in third year. You know, that may be a bit closer to your skill level." _

_She laughs and pushes him away. "Prat," she says as she pushes her parchment off the table and stares into the dying fire. For a moment, she sees the gold in his eyes within the flames, yet with the next flicker the fire is gone. _

_"Do you think it will be okay, James?" she whispers so quietly that he almost thinks she never spoke at all. Her face still stares at the fireplace, although there is nothing left but ash. _

_"The speech," he asks, his throat feeling slightly tight. _

_Her head shakes, her hand finds his, and she looks at him from over her shoulder. "No, James, not the speech." _

_Shadows cross over her body, but she seems to glow in the darkness of those very shadows. Like a light, one that could never die. One that he had to go on believing in. _

_"I think it will be perfect," he whispers. And then he kisses her. _

_END _


End file.
